Life Sciences and Energy

Medtech start-up Embo Medical secures €3m investment

By Business & Finance
06 October 2014
EMBO Medical
Embo Medical co-founders Liam Mullins, Wayne Allen and Colin Forde

Embo Medical, an early stage medical device company focused on developing technology to shut down blood flow in blood vessels, has secured €3m in seed-funding.

The investment syndicate included the AIB Seed Capital Fund and the Start-Up Accelerator Fund, Irrus Investments, HBAN’s Medtech Business Angel Syndicate, Western Development Commission and Enterprise Ireland.

The investment will enable Embo Medical to secure regulatory approval and enter the market, and in doing so employ approximately 10 people directly and up to another 10 people indirectly.

Embo Medical is based in National University of Ireland Galway’s Business Innovation Centre. In 2011, the management team of Wayne Allen, Colin Forde and Liam Mullins undertook the BioInnovate Ireland Fellowship, a specialist medical device innovation programme. Upon completion, they founded Embo Medical to develop solutions to unmet clinical needs that were identified while observing embolisation procedures in hospitals during the Fellowship.

Embolisation is a minimally invasive endovascular procedure used to deliberately stop blood flow in blood vessels when treating cancers, internal haemorrhage, aneurysms, and venous disease. Embo is developing the first true one-shot (one device per vessel) vascular embolisation device. The product is aimed at the peripheral vascular embolisation market, a market where physicians perform about 180,000 procedures per year worldwide.

Embo CEO, Wayne Allen said: “This investment will accelerate Embo’s development of a state-of-the-art solution for the treatment of several diseases, will further prove the product’s value through clinical studies and enable us to access the large US market. Our technology has the potential to become the standard of care while simultaneously reducing the cost of healthcare.”

Dr Mahmood Razavi, interventional radiologist and director of Clinical Trials, St. Joseph Heart and Vascular Centre, Orange, CA, USA, said: “The innovative Embo solution combines the desirable characteristics of coils and plugs into one device and represents a potential new gold standard in embolisation. It is designed for safe and easy delivery, and rapid cessation of blood flow. The technology will be a clinically effective approach for patients requiring embolisation.”